A plan to spend as much as $50 million to fill in a Geary Boulevard underpass is getting serious consideration from city officials and community leaders eager to repair some of the damage from San Francisco’s ill-conceived urban renewal projects of the 1950s and ’60s.

The project calls for eliminating the underpass beneath Fillmore Street and restoring the boulevard to the flatter, narrower, more pedestrian-friendly Geary Street that existed before 1961, when it was turned into an eight-lane expressway by the bulldozers that dug the underpass and razed the adjoining homes and businesses in the name of progress.